There’s a peculiar word in modern Chinese – 撒娇 (sa1jiao1), meaning ‘to behave like a spoiled child.’ Aside from children complaining to their parents, it’s most commonly seen thusly: a young couple (19-25) will be walking down the street. The girl will start whining / complaining loudly, and the boy is expected to comfort her. If he does poorly, she may escalate: throw her shopping bags, and demand that he run to fetch them.

It’s sort of a very overt flirting game that at times looks likes reverse domestic violence, but only out in public (there needs to be an audience for face / dignity to be at risk). These very public displays of emasculation seem odd, especially in what is normally thought of as a very patriarchal society.

Perhaps the women are realizing they are in very high demand.

A recent study in the British Medicine Journal concludes that, among Chinese under 20, there are 32 million more men than women:

The findings paint a discouraging picture of very high and increasing sex ratios in the reproductive age group in China for the next two decades. The sex ratio increased steadily from 108 in the cohort born between 1985 and 1989 to 124 in the 2000 to 2004 cohort. However, the ratio then declined to 119 for the 2005 cohort…

The 120 to 100 number had been bandied about a lot; but only applies to a particular slice of the population: one that will soon be reaching mating age; where about a dozen or so out of every hundred men will be without a woman.

The happy optimist in me wants to believe that these men will just get lewd with each other, and harmonious society will emerge (there have been serious suggestions by Chinese demographers that the natural prevalence of homosexuality is about equal to the number of excess men. Not sure what happens to the homosexual women in this scenario).

The realist, of course, says that this will produce a dating / mating world very unfavorable to women: rape, prostitution, more sex trafficking, and lots of sexual frustration on both ends. Though somewhat counterintuitive, the ‘compression at the top’ trends (with wealthier men occupying more than one women at a time) will continue, and even grow more pronounced. As ‘proper wife/mistress’ quality women become more scarce, their ‘value’ as status symbols go up, and I think (all else being equal) wealthy men will allocate more resources towards that end.